Organizing the Unorganized Lifestyle Retailers in India: An Integrated Framework

Abstract

India is one of the largest countries with consumers belonging to the widest range of Religions,Regions, Languages, Sub-Cultures, Ethnicities, and Economic backgrounds which makes it difficultfor just a few organized lifestyle retailers to service divergent needs of such consumers. This makesit furthermore beneficial for unorganized lifestyle retailers spread across India in humongous numberswhich are predominantly owned and operated by the store owner and their family members to takesuch divergent consumer needs to their advantage as far as their survival is concerned. Unless theyattempt to adopt certain modifications and changes to their existing retailing model and store imagethis benefit will no longer be available to them in the long run. Organized lifestyle retailing in Indiais steadily growing its penetration into Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and this is putting unorganized lifestyleretailers in these cities in quandary. In this study, we have analysed twelve months actual data across,(a) unit economics; (b) returns on investment; (c) 94 business deployment factors; (d) 192 criticaleffective factors; and (e) qualitative factors of few select organized and unorganized lifestyle retailersin India thereby drawing inferences / insights to design and propose an integrated framework whichis (a) simple to understand; (b) easy to execute; and most importantly; (c) demanding minimaladditional capital investment and would possibly help unorganized lifestyle retailers in India to getorganized